What Masie Knew (2013) - 6/10. Based on a title by Henry James--a shame they couldn't have used more of the source, but I guess when updating the 1897 story to the 21st Century most everything else had to be junked. The basic situation, I guess, is retained: a 6-year-old girl is a football passed between parents during an acrimonious break-up. Here's the big news flash the film offers--the child suffers. Well, the child actress playing Masie is very good, at least--she acts her age, and seems genuinely confused by what is going on. I enjoyed watching the sexy nanny, played by Dutch treat Joanna Vanderham. She was rather well wrapped up in this one, but I'm hoping to see more of her in future projects. Oh yeah, Julianne Moore and Steve Coogan are also in the film.

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The Full Monty - 8/10 - It was funny watching this while going through a Cracker marathon. I kept expecting Robert Carlyle to whip out a bayonet and gut Tom Wilkinson (or better, Mark Addy). I enjoyed it though.

Trouble With the Curve - 4/10 - Part of this movie is a grouchy geezer rant against Moneyball, starring Clint Eastwood. The rest is an anodyne romance with Amy Adams and Justin Timberlake acting all cutesy. The leads are charming but there's no there, there. Just cliches and treacle.

just saw Taxi Driver (1976) for the second time (first time on blu-ray), and I really don't love it as much as the rest of the world does. I understand that there are lots of characters and scenes and moments that are very memorable -- and I guess there are lots of people for whom the theme of loneliness strikes a deep chord -- but this just wasn't a movie in which I ate up every moment, where every second was a joy like "OMG this is amazing." It just wasn't. I think the movie succeeds on many levels - the characters are all terrific, all the actors are just wonderful in their roles, the scenes of urban decay, the pre-Giuliani New York of crime and porn theaters and whores and guns and dope and pimps, shown very well, the scenes with Harvey Keitel and Jodie Foster are so difficult to watch cuz they make you feel so dirty, which is exactly the point. So when you break down the scenes and actors, there's not anything I can criticize. However, there are some movies -- the ones I consider classics -- that just grab you. Every second of it is a joy, you are just eating up every moment, and I just didn't feel like that here. I know that many people consider this the greatest movie of the 1970's, maybe one of the ten greatest movies of all-time, but for me, it's no better than good. This is not an anti-Scoreses thing; to the contrary, I love love love Scorsese's body of work.But I just don't rate Taxi Driver as a classic.

Here are Scorses movies I rate above Taxi Driver: Who's That Knocking at My Door (9/1), Mean Streets (9/10), Goodfellas (10/10), The Color of Money (8.5/10), The Aviator (10/10), The Departed (8/10), Casino (9/10). (Note: I only saw Raging Bull once, a while ago on a little screen, and need to see it again before I can really decide how I feel about it. I plan to see it this week).

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What strikes a deep chord for many people (consciously or not) in Taxi Driver not only loneliness but also existentialist themes, shown in a very pragmatical light (who am I? How to be someone? Am I defined by what I do or by who I am?). If these themes (or the way they're used here) don't ring a bell for you, then you won't see the film as what you call a "classic".

I thought more or less what you think of it when I saw it first. Now, these themes talk to me and have become very important questions of my day to day life, but I still have a thing against self destructive people and characters.

Maybe existentialist themes dont interest me that much because I was raised in a very religious home, in which there was a very firm knowledge of who we are, how we got here, what we are doing here, etc. Can't say I've kept everything, but those fundamental beliefs stay with you

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Personal history and education exeplains a lot about what themes we care Schrader grew up in a very religious but also very strict/obscurantist family (he saw his first movie when he was 17). I think he kind of rejected all this as soon as he lived alone.

My parents never owned a television, i bought my own when i was 15 (they were cool enough to know i was different and didnt make a fuss). I never saw movies till i started going to theaters on my own when i was 13. Titanic was my first movie, Kate Winslet was the first pair of tits I saw

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There are three types of people in the world, my friend: those who can add, and those who can't.

What strikes a deep chord for many people (consciously or not) in Taxi Driver not only loneliness but also existentialist themes, shown in a very pragmatical light (who am I? How to be someone? Am I defined by what I do or by who I am?). If these themes (or the way they're used here) don't ring a bell for you, then you won't see the film as what you call a "classic".

Using a psycho to explore these themes isn't much use, though, is it? Travis is both demented and dangerous, and whatever "truths" he comes up with aren't going to be of much help to (presumably) sane people like us. Yeah, we can still ponder these issues on our own--but we don't need Travis's example as a jumping off point. I mean, we already have Camus's The Stranger, what more do we need?

Btw, a lot of people don't seem to understand the picture. The point of the bloodbath followed by the community's adulation is that it's all down to chance. Travis happens to kill the right people in the right circumstances, and so is honored for it. But obviously things could have been different--as we see in his choice for his original target (the political candidate). If he'd shot the politician he would have been a pariah. But circumstances prevented that, so Travis went for target #2 and got lucky. Scorsese makes it clear we haven't heard the last of Travis, though. As he drops Betsy off at the end of picture and starts to drive away, he sees something in his rearview mirror to which he reacts. As Scorsese informed us on the old Criterion LD commentary track, he was at pains to get Herrmann to put a sting on the audio track at just that moment. According to Marty, Travis the human timebomb has just been re-set and has resumed ticking. The film ends on a note of coming apocalypse. Maybe Schrader/Scorsese were also suggesting that there are many Travises out there, spawn of a rotten society about to turn on itself. Well, it was 1976, after all, when New York was very different, before Times Square had been Disney-fied.

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